


i was the one you always dreamed of

by princessmiakitten



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Divorce, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love, moniwa is dfab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessmiakitten/pseuds/princessmiakitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Moniwa Kaname might not be Oikawa Tooru, strong volleyball player and strong leader and strong lover, but she is Moniwa Kaname, strong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i was the one you always dreamed of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leryline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leryline/gifts).



As soon as she walks in, she feels the tension.

The air in the big apartment is heavy. Electric. It makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and it sets her on edge.

It’s strange. She’s almost...uncomfortable in her own home. Kaname’s tongue darts out to moisten her lips as her eyes scan the wide open space of the living room.

Not a single thing out of place.

And maybe she’s just imagining things. It must be the new...hormones. It makes her laugh and she just rubs her stomach through her shirt. That’s what it is, making her body feel displaced where it feels most comfortable.

Nothing quite like home, right?

But it doesn’t quite quell her worries, do anything to calm her nerves. It doesn’t keep her from shifting her eyes back and forth-- searching. Searching for something to pop up from the corners, from the shadows, and take her by surprise.

It follows her to her bedroom, the safest place.

But there it is.

She doesn’t have to search for it. It’s right in front of her eyes.

“ _I love you._ ” She hears him whisper and her body tenses. I love you.

The same words he whispered to her every night before they slept, every morning when she woke up. Words pressed against her eyelids when they were closed, against each notch of her spine, against each knuckle.

His favorite place to say it had been on the fourth finger of her left hand. Right over the gold wedding band.

I love you, inscribed with beautiful script, pressed against her finger at all times.

Kaname can't really move-- her body is frozen in place, but inside it's screaming at her. Telling her to leave, telling her to move, telling her to do something and get out of this situation since it'll only leave everyone uncomfortable and--

She doesn't want that, does she?

She doesn't want Wakatoshi to be uncomfortable.

She blinks and she sees the brown hair that's come to be a permanent fixture in her life. She sees the perfect ends that always manage to curl up and the sleek and shine that only comes from proper hair care and she knows that voice.

Kaname knows it too well.

And she just kind of blanks out there. She doesn't really know what to do or what to say or how to feel and it's all just very confusing to her.

What does one do in a situation for which they've never even thought about? For which they never even thought was a possibility with how unconditionally and completely Wakatoshi loves (or is it _loved_ now?) her.

All she knows is that she's not angry with him. She isn't upset with him, but more herself.

Why wasn't she good enough for him? Why wasn't she better at being a wife, at being a lover, at being a partner? Was it that she didn't satisfy him? Why wasn't she prettier or funnier or just.

Perfect.

Like Tooru is.

Tooru is the personification of perfection-- always has been. Even when they were in high school, even when they held the same positions, though they've never competed. She'd always hear about the great Oikawa Tooru, the generation's most talented setter and glorious captain.

How could she ever compare?

The truth is that she can't. She could never be better than him at setting, at being a captain, or even being Wakatoshi's lover.

And Wakatoshi only deserved the best.

She doesn't know how long she stands there, frozen, lost in her own thoughts, but it's not until Wakatoshi realizes that she's there, that she sees them, that it really clicks.

She's not needed here. He doesn't need her.

He hasn't needed her since the first time she saw the dark bruises on his chest, which she passed off as volleyball injuries even though she knew they weren't. Maybe he hasn't needed her longer than that.

Maybe he's never needed her.

And maybe that's what hurts her the most as she backs out of the room, as she tries to distance herself. Maybe he's never needed her and she was never the one for him and everything that she's ever believed in is a lie.

All the _I love you_ 's and the intimate moments and the tenderness in the way he treated her. Has he been imagining Tooru this entire time?

Has he been thinking about Tooru while they were together? While they were sharing their vows, while they were on their honeymoon?

How long?

That's all she really wants to know. How long has she been led along? How long has she refused to see the signs that are, have been, blinking at her? How long has she just ignored them out of the good faith that Wakatoshi isn't like that. That Wakatoshi loves her too much to cheat on her, that maybe they were volleyball injuries and that he really did stay too late at work and that's why he ran late all those times.

They were all right there.

She's on autopilot as she gathers her bag and starts to walk towards the door, her extremities starting to get cold and then numb. She can hear Wakatoshi's deep voice and instead of feeling at peace, she just feels. Scared.

She's scared of Wakatoshi for the first time in her life.

Empty.

But she turns and she smiles because what else can she do? She's not really angry with him-- she would've cheated on her too. She's too plain, too average, too boring. Wakatoshi needed someone to excite him constantly, someone to keep him on his toes and offer him something new everyday. It was something Kaname couldn't do.

"Please don't leave me." Kaname can see it in his eyes: the pain, the sadness, the regret. She can hear it in his voice.

"But I don't deserve you anyway, Ushijima-san." She doesn't say anything else. She doesn't cry, she doesn't yell at him. Just like that, she's gone, out the door, out of his life.

Her hand rests on her stomach. Rubs it gently.

At least he'd left her with a parting gift.

 

She spends the next few weeks settling back in her home town, back with her parents, back to life without Wakatoshi. Except not really since Wakatoshi had been there ever since she could remember.

He doesn't call her. Not even once.

It takes a few months for her to get the courage send the papers. It takes another to send the rings back, but not to Wakatoshi. Three rings: promise, engagement, and wedding, all packaged and shipped to one Oikawa Tooru in Tokyo.

And she thinks that maybe this is how it's meant to be. How it was always meant to be.

She was meant to stay in this small town forever, meant to stay here where everyone knew each other's names, where everyone was just mediocre except for the special few that managed to venture out to Tokyo.

Just like Wakatoshi.

He was always meant for greater things, and Kaname supposed that she just wasn't one of them. He was meant for greater things like following his dreams, which led him right to the top.

He's a star. The top is where he's meant to be.

Far and out of Kaname's reach.

And she was meant to be down on Earth, to be ordinary. Maybe she was meant to be alone. She never really noticed anyone besides Wakatoshi, and it's a shame on her to only be looking at the stars when she never had a place among them.

She's meant to be alone and that's exactly what she is, until she's not anymore.

 

Eight months after she walks out, she's alone in the cold room with no one holding her hand, no one telling her she's going to be okay, no one comforting her. Only doctors that know that she had to push that baby out, that directed her on what to do.

She's alone until she hears that sharp cry pierce the damp air and it makes her want to cry too.

It's the last piece of him that she has with her, the last thing really tying her to him, but she doesn't think about that.

It's her child.

The nurse hands her the baby wrapped up in a blanket like the present that he is. He's her present, the sole representative of everything good in her life.

A blessing.

She names him Moniwa Hiroki, her symbol of strength and courage.

Hiroki stops crying the moment he's placed into Kaname's arms and he opens his eyes wide, the familiar green staring right at her. The curls on his head are the same shade of brown. She doesn't feel any less blessed.

 

Six years later, Kaname's still in love with Ushijima Wakatoshi.

There's nothing that would even allow her to forget him for even a second. Her son is the spitting image of him with his eyes and the color of his hair and even the cute pointy ears. The only way anyone would be able to tell he's hers is when he smiles. His entire face lights up and she feels like she's looking at the sun, he's so bright.

She wonders if Wakatoshi ever felt that way about her.

If her son wasn't a physical reminder, she sees him whenever she turns on the television. He's on every news channel, on every sports channel, on every entertainment channel. Him, him playing volleyball or getting groceries or.

Holding hands with Tooru.

That's what they mostly are, Japan's power sports couple. The dynamic duo from the national men's team.

Kaname's in the living room with her son when a live broadcast of Tooru's and Wakatoshi's wedding goes on.

Tooru did always look good in white. There are no words to describe how exceptional Wakatoshi looked, all pressed up, and she can only remember what it was like to be standing across from him, looking only into his eyes and forgetting the fact that there were so many people watching.

Of course, there was no added pressure of the television and news cameras flashing in their faces when they got married.

There was no fanfare or commotion. In fact, most people didn't even know she existed since they had gotten married before Wakatoshi had gotten on the national team.

There's a little bit of a bad taste in Kaname's mouth.

She turns off the television before they say their vows.

"I love you, mommy." Hiroki chirps and Kaname gives him a kiss on the top of his head.

 

And in another six years, she's back to where she started.

It's with a call from the sperm donation center that she's right back to square one of wanting Ushijima Wakatoshi after finally deciding that she can be all right with just Hiroki.

She sits across from him and Oikawa Tooru in the cold, white, clinical room with one hand over her stomach and the other stuck underneath her thigh as her fingers start to get cold again.

They want her to be the surrogate mother and she can't exactly say no since it's a lot of money and what kind of fucked up fate made it so that she'd be their perfect match? And so she says yes, mostly because she needs the added income to help her parents with the house expenses and raise her ever-growing child, who is springing up real tall and there's only so much she can do with a teacher's salary.

He got his height from his father, too.

And so she signs the papers without much protest, but she does make sure to state her conditions clearly.

In her house. With her family.

And they agree, and it's probably out of guilt. Or maybe they don't even feel guilty and it's out of pity that they agree.

Either one is not something that Kaname wants.

The process is sterile, clean, and she doesn't need to be touched at all by Wakatoshi or Tooru, which is something for which she's glad.

This pregnancy is different, though.

She's not alone.

She goes through her everyday routine of dropping Hiroki off to school and then going to work herself, but when she comes home, she's not alone.

The first day, it was a little weird. She came home to see Wakatoshi sitting on her front steps two months into her pregnancy. She doesn't say much to him besides inviting him inside, into the house he used to know. The house where he'd sneak in in the middle of the night without Kaname's parents knowing or where they'd always meet up to study together or play together.

This house was the core of their friendship, their relationship.

Kaname was in the middle of making tea when Hiroki walked in, donning his Shiratorizawa Junior High volleyball jersey, and she could hear Wakatoshi gasp, probably at the resemblance.

Probably at the fact that Hiroki was the spitting image of Wakatoshi as a child.

But she doesn't comment when she comes back to see tears in Wakatoshi's eyes, she pretends not to hear him say "I'm sorry."

For what would he be sorry? Letting her go through the pregnancy by herself? Not making it his business to know about her? Those were all things she felt she deserved. Why should he care about someone like her, after all.

After the first time, Wakatoshi keeps coming. Keeps trying to make it easier on her and it's so easy for her to delude herself into thinking that this is how it's supposed to be. That she was supposed to come home to a loving husband after a long day and curl up on the couch with him and watch mindless television while their older kid does their homework on the table in front of them.

The fact that Wakatoshi keeps rubbing her growing stomach, continues to speak to it, comes with her to her appointments.

The fact that he keeps playing volleyball with her son in the backyard, letting him set to Wakatoshi. At least he got that from her mother.

It's so hard to remember that it's not to her that he belongs. That this child won't be with her. This child is his and Tooru's and it's so hard to remember when he's telling her stomach that the baby is going to come out as beautiful as their mother.

It's hard.

And she's angry.

Twelve years and seven months later, she's absolutely livid.

"Why are you here, Wakatoshi?" She starts when she finds him outside the house again. "Why are you always here? I'm not your wife, I'm not your friend. I am a stranger that's carrying your child for you and your actual husband." There are tears in her eyes, strange venom in her voice that never belonged there.

"I went through that first pregnancy alone. You weren't there to hold my hand through it, you weren't there to raise our child. I did it by myself. I don't need you here." The words are sour in her mouth and she doesn't like it.

And it's a lie.

She does need him there. She needs him to hold her at night when she can't sleep, to rub her stomach when the baby can't seem to settle down, to stroke her hair when she's stressing herself out too much.

Wakatoshi knows too much about her.

And she wants to hate him for it.

But he comes back the next day with her favorite flowers, with her favorite sweets, with a hyperactive Hiroki in the car. She can't be upset with him.

She never could be.

But she doesn't accept them and instead just takes Hiroki inside the house.

So he tries again. 

It's the same routine everyday and eventually she comes to accept it. Accept him back. She can feel herself smiling again, feeling warm again in the way that only he made her feel. He carries her up the stairs when her feet hurt too much to walk up them and he holds her at night when she can't sleep because the baby is kicking too much.

The way it was always meant to be.

She only hopes he feels the same way.

But with each passing day, she remembers, can never forget that this baby will have to leave her arms when she pushes it out of her. That this baby will be raised by Wakatoshi and Tooru, not her and Wakatoshi.

 

She's sad, the day she delivers. She's crying along with the piercing cry of the baby because Wakatoshi is holding her hand tight, is leaning down to whisper words of encouragement, and it's too much.

It's all too much.

It was the way she always wanted to be, but it's too late.

She prepares to say goodbye to the beautiful child in her arms, clean from her blood and bundled up in a soft blanket. The child with her button nose and Wakatoshi's wide green eyes.

Wakatoshi's nowhere to be found.

Probably letting her say goodbye because Wakatoshi might be slow, but he's not stupid. He knows how this loss will make her feel, but it's something that he decided on anyway.

She decided on this. Having this baby was her choice.

And now it's her choice to let her baby go, let at least one child be raised by her father and the person her father really loves, has always loved.

She falls asleep with the baby on her chest, suckling at her breast, and when she wakes up, the baby is gone.

Wakatoshi is gone.

And this is how it always ends.

She doesn't cry anymore, has no more tears to cry. Her bones are heavy, her body dead weight.

But life goes on. And she goes on.

Alone. Just as she always has.

 

Because Moniwa Kaname might not be Oikawa Tooru, strong volleyball player and strong leader and strong lover, but she is Moniwa Kaname, strong.

**Author's Note:**

> when this was being plotted out, it was gonna have a happier ending but then :)


End file.
